''Young Knight in a Landscape'', or ''Portrait of a Knight'', is an oil on canvas painting by the

Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the trans ...

artist

Vittore Carpaccio Vittore Carpaccio ( UK: /kɑːrˈpætʃ(i)oʊ/, US: /-ˈpɑːtʃ-/, Italian: itˈtoːre karˈpattʃo c. 1460/66 – 1525/26) was an Italian painter of the Venetian school who studied under Gentile Bellini. Carpaccio was largely influence ...

, now in the

Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum (in Spanish, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza (), named after its founder), or simply the Thyssen, is an art museum in Madrid, Spain, located near the Prado Museum on one of the city's main boulevards. I ...

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

. Dated 1510, this is the earliest full-length portrait in Western painting—on the assumption that it is a

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this r ...

, as it seems likely. It is characteristic of Carpaccio that apart from this important innovation, the style of the work seems in other respects to look back to the previous century. From some time until the 20th century the painting had been given the monogram of Albrecht Dürer, and Carpaccio's signature had been overpainted. The realism and detail of Carpaccio does in fact show Northern influence.

Composition

The painting shows a young knight, surrounded by a rather crowded series of symbols. The heron caught in the sky by a hawk might hint at this knight's death in battle, also alluded to by his posture, which recalls that of a funerary statue; an alternative theory is that this is a memorial portrait of a person already dead. The other knight with a lance might then be the same person during his life. Alternatively, the figure on horseback might be his page; the page of a knight occasionally appears in portraits wearing his master's helmet and having his gauntlets on his person, ready to supply both when called upon, which seems to have been an actual practice. Two later examples are

Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italian (Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, nea ...

's portrait of Alphonso D'Avalos, and a portrait by

Paris Bordone Paris Bordone (Paris Paschalinus Bordone; 5 July 1500 – 19 January 1571) was an Italian painter of the Venetian Renaissance who, despite training with Titian, maintained a strand of Mannerist complexity and provincial vigor. Biography Bord ...

of a man in armour with two pages (now

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, New York). In the left lower corner is a white ermine and a scroll stating "I prefer to die rather than to incur dishonour" (''malo mori quam foedari''). The symbolism of these and the other animals and plants have been much discussed by art historians.

Subject identity

For centuries the identity of the knight has been a subject of discussion among the most renowned art historians, including

Bernard Berenson Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865 – October 6, 1959) was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. His book ''The Drawings of the Florentine Painters'' was an international success. His wife Mary is thought to have had a large ...

and

Lionello Venturi Lionello Venturi (25 April 1885, Modena – 14 August 1961, Rome) was an Italian historian and critic of art. He edited the first catalogue raisonné of Paul Cézanne. Life Lionello Venturi was born in 1885, son of art historian Adolfo Venturi. ...

. The portrait is now considered most likely to show

Francesco Maria I della Rovere Francesco Maria I della Rovere (25 March 1490 – 20 October 1538) was an Italian condottiero, who was Duke of Urbino from 1508 to 1516 and, after retaking the throne from Lorenzo II de' Medici, from 1521 to 1538. Biography He was born ...

, the

Duke of Urbino The Duchy of Urbino was an independent duchy in early modern central Italy, corresponding to the northern half of the modern region of Marche. It was directly annexed by the Papal States in 1625. It was bordered by the Adriatic Sea in the east ...

and nephew of

Pope Julius II Pope Julius II ( la, Iulius II; it, Giulio II; born Giuliano della Rovere; 5 December 144321 February 1513) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 1503 to his death in February 1513. Nicknamed the Warrior Pope or th ...

, during whose reign it was painted. Nevertheless, a more recent interpretation identifies the knight as the Venetian patrician Marco Gabriel, who was rector of the fortress of Methoni, in Greece, during the Ottoman siege of 1500. His family would have commissioned the painting as a tribute to his memory, as, being the only Venetian survivor of the siege, he had been accused of cowardice. Taken by the Ottomans to

Constantinople la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه , alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya ( Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis ( ...

, he was beheaded there on 4 November 1501.

Owners

The painting was sold by the heirs of the American collector

Otto Kahn Otto Hermann Kahn (February 21, 1867 – March 29, 1934) was a German-born American investment banker, collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts. Kahn was a well-known figure, appearing on the cover of ''Time'' magazine and was sometime ...

after his death and bought by

Heinrich Thyssen Heinrich Thyssen (31 October 1875 – 26 June 1947), after 22 June 1907 Heinrich Freiherr Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon et Impérfalva, was a German-Hungarian entrepreneur and art collector. Biography Thyssen was born in Mülheim an der Ruhr, the ...

in 1935.

Details

File:Vittore Carpaccio - Young Knight in a Landscape - Google Art Project-x0-y2.jpg, File:Vittore Carpaccio - Young Knight in a Landscape - Google Art Project-x0-y0.jpg

References

External links

Thyssen CollectionVideo Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza: Young Knight in a Landscape
{{Authority control 1510 paintings Paintings by Vittore Carpaccio 16th-century portraits Paintings in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum Horses in art Birds in art Dogs in art